Abstract

Neutrons produced by cosmic ray muons are an important background for underground experiments studying neutrino oscillations, neutrinoless double beta decay, dark matter, and other rare-event signals. A measurement of the neutron yield in the three different experimental halls of the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment at varying depth is reported. The neutron yield in Daya Bay’s liquid scintillator is measured to be Yn=(10.26±0.86)×10−5, (10.22±0.87)×10−5, and (17.03±1.22)×10−5 μ−1 g−1 cm2 at depths of 250, 265, and 860 meters-water-equivalent. These results are compared to other measurements and the simulated neutron yield in Fluka and Geant4. A global fit including the Daya Bay measurements yields a power law coefficient of 0.77±0.03 for the dependence of the neutron yield on muon energy.6 MoreReceived 3 November 2017DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.97.052009Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasCosmic rays & astroparticlesParticle productionPhysical SystemsNeutronsTechniquesNeutrino detectorsParticles & FieldsNuclear Physics

Highlights

  • Neutrons and other hadrons produced by cosmic ray muons are an important source of background for underground low-background experiments studying neutrino oscillations, double beta decay, dark matter and other rare events

  • Eμavg is the average muon energy for muons passing through the GdLS at each experimental halls (EHs), calculated from the MUSIC simulation

  • The neutron yields predicted from GEANT4 and FLUKA simulations at each EH are shown, with statistical uncertainties only

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

Neutrons and other hadrons produced by cosmic ray muons are an important source of background for underground low-background experiments studying neutrino oscillations, double beta decay, dark matter and other rare events. This paper reports a measurement of the neutron production rate in liquid scintillator at three different values of average muon energy by the Daya Bay Reactor Neutrino Experiment, an underground lowbackground neutrino oscillation experiment. Daya Bay, located near the city of Shenzhen in the Guangdong province in China, is designed to study neutrino oscillations by measuring the survival probability of electron antineutrinos from nuclear reactors [13]. The three EHs are at vertical depths of 250, 265, and 860 meters-water-equivalent (m.w.e.) allowing for a measurement of the neutron yield at three different values of average muon energy within the same experiment

Antineutrino detectors
Muon detectors
Muon Flux Simulation
SIMULATION
Detector simulation
GEANT4
Analysis strategy
Data set
Muon event selection
Neutron event selection
RESULTS
Comparison with other experiments
SUMMARY
Methods
Full Text
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